The Devil and Rick Santorum

Critics of Senator Santorum’s moral and religious views, especially in the media, have not been wholly scrupulous about identifying what they are before attacking them. He has been described, falsely, as an advocate of banning contraception. A dated joke about birth control made by one of his major supporters has been treated as a campaign scandal. A remark about Obama’s misguided environmental “theology” has been turned into an insinuation that the president is not a Christian.

But the press has not had to invent controversial remarks by Santorum, who has supplied them himself. He has said that Satan is undermining America, in part by corrupting mainline Protestantism; that liberal versions of Christianity are distortions of the creed; that as president he would speak out against birth control, and that states should be free to prohibit it; and that John McCain “doesn’t have any” religious views.